marked preference for Anna. She did nothing to attract the dog: but she
liked to stroke her and let her snuggle down in her lap, and see that
she was fed, and she seemed to love her as much as she was capable of
loving anything. One day the dog failed to get out of the way of a
motor-car. She was run over almost under the very eyes of her masters.
She was still alive and yelping pitiably. Braun ran out of the house
bareheaded: he picked up the bleeding mass and tried to relieve the
dog's suffering. Anna came up, looked down without so much as stooping,
made a face of disgust, and went away again. Braun watched the little
creature's agony with tears in his eyes. Christophe was striding up and
down the garden with clenched fists. He heard Anna quietly giving orders
to the servant. He could not help crying out:
"It doesn't affect you at all?"
She replied:
"There's nothing to be done. It is better not to think of it."
He felt that he hated her: then he was struck by the grotesqueness of
her reply: and he laughed. He thought it would be well if Anna could
give him her recipe for avoiding the thought of sad things, and that
life must be very easy for those who are lucky enough to have no heart.
He fancied that if Braun were to die, Anna would hardly be put out by
it, and he felt glad that he was not married. His solitude seemed less
sad to him than the fetters of habit that bind a man for life to a
creature to whom he may be an object of hatred, or worse still, nothing
at all. It was very certain that this woman loved no one. She hardly
existed. The atmosphere of piety had withered her.
She took Christophe by surprise one day at the end of October.--They
were at dinner. He was talking to Braun about a crime of passion which
was the sole topic in the town. In the country two Italian girls,
sisters, had fallen in love with the same man. They were both unable to
make the sacrifice with a good grace, and so they had drawn lots as to
who should yield. But when the lot was cast the girl who had lost showed
little inclination to abide by the decision. The other was enraged by
such faithlessness. From insult they came to blows, and even to fighting
with knives: then, suddenly, the wind changed: they kissed each other,
and wept, and vowed that they could not live without each other: and, as
they could not submit to sharing the lover, they made up their minds
that he should be killed. This they did. One night the two girls invited
the lover to their room, and he was congratulating himself upon such
twofold favor; and, while one girl clasped him passionately in her arms,
the other no less passionately stabbed him in the back. It chanced that
his cries were heard. People came and tore him in a pitiable condition
from the embraces of his charmers, and they were arrested. They
protested that it was no one's business, and that they alone were
interested in the matter, and that, from the moment when they had agreed
to rid themselves of their own property, it was no one else's concern.
Their victim was not a little inclined to agree with their line of
argument: but the law was unable to follow it. And Braun could not
understand it either.
"They are mad," he said. "They should be shut up in an asylum.
Beasts!... I can understand a man killing himself for love. I can even
understand a man killing the woman he loves if she deceives him.... I
don't mean that I would excuse his doing so: but I am prepared to admit
that there is a remnant of primitive savagery in us: it is barbarous,
but it is logical: you kill the person who makes you suffer. But for a
woman to kill the man she loves, without bitterness, without hatred,
simply because another woman loves him, is nothing but madness.... Can
you understand it, Christophe?"
"Peuh!" said Christophe. "I'm quite used to being unable to understand
things. Love is madness."
Anna, who had said nothing, and seemed not to be listening, said in her
calm voice:
"There is nothing irrational in it. It is quite natural. When a woman
loves, she wants to destroy the man she loves so that no one else may
have him."
Braun looked at his wife aghast, thumped on the table, folded his arms,
and said:
"Where on earth did you get that from?... What? So you must put your oar
in, must you? What the devil do you know about it?"
Anna blushed a little, and said no more. Braun went on:
"When a woman loves, she wants to destroy, does she? That's a nice sort
of thing to say! To destroy any one who is dear to you is to destroy
yourself.--On the contrary, when one loves, the natural feeling is to do
good to the person you love, to cherish him, to defend him, to be kind
to him, to be kind to everything and everybody. Love is paradise on
earth."
Anna sat staring into the darkness, and let him talk, and then shook her
head, and said coldly:
"A woman is not kind when she loves."
Christophe did not renew the experiment of hearing Anna sing. He was
afraid ... of disillusion, or what? He could not tell. Anna was just as
fearful. She would never stay in the room when he began to play.
But one evening in November, as he was reading by the fire, he saw Anna
sitting with her sewing in her lap, deep in one of her reveries. She was
looking blankly in front of her, and Christophe thought he saw in her
eyes the strangely burning light of the other evening. He closed his
book. She felt his eyes upon her, and picked up her sewing. With her
eyelids down she saw everything. He got up and said:
"Come."
She stared at him, and there was still a little uneasiness in her eyes:
she understood, and followed him.
"Where are you going?" asked Braun.
"To the piano," replied Christophe.
He played. She sang. At once he found her just as she had been on the
first occasion. She entered the heroic world of music as a matter of
course, as though it were her own. He tested her yet further, and went
on to a second song, then to a third, more passionate, which let loose
in her the whole gamut of passion, uplifting both herself and him: then,
as they reached a very paroxysm, he stopped short and asked her, staring
straight into her eyes:
"Tell me, what woman are you?"
Anna replied:
"I do not know."
He said brutally:
"What is there in you that makes you sing like that?"
She replied:
"Only what you put there to make me sing."
"Yes? Well, it is not out of place. I'm wondering whether I created it
or you. How do you come to think of such things?"
"I don't know. I think I am no longer myself when I am singing."
"I think it is only then that you are yourself."
They said no more. Her cheeks were wet with a slight perspiration. Her
bosom heaved, but she spoke no word. She stared at the lighted candles,
and mechanically scratched away the wax that had trickled down the side
of the candlestick. He drummed on the keys as he sat looking at her.
They exchanged a few awkward remarks, brusquely and roughly, and then
they tried a commonplace remark or two, and finally relapsed into
silence, being fearful of probing any farther....
Next day they hardly spoke: they stole glances at each other in a sort
of dread. But they made it a habit to play and sing together in the
evening. Before long they began in the afternoon, giving a little more
time to it each day. Always the same incomprehensible passion would take
possession of her with the very first bars, and set her flaming from
head to foot, and, while the music lasted, make of the ordinary little
woman an imperious Venus, the incarnation of all the furies of the soul.
Braun was surprised at Anna's sudden craze for singing, but did not take
the trouble to discover any explanation for a mere feminine caprice: he
was often present at their little concerts, marked time with his head,
gave his advice, and was perfectly happy, although he would have
preferred softer, sweeter music: such an expenditure of energy seemed to
him exaggerated and unnecessary. Christophe breathed freely in the
atmosphere of danger: but he was losing his head: he was weakened by the
crisis through which he had passed, and could not resist, and lost
consciousness of what was happening to him without perceiving what was
happening to Anna. One afternoon, in the middle of a song, with all the
frantic ardor of it in full blast, she suddenly stopped, and left the
room without making any explanation. Christophe waited for her: she did
not return. Half an hour later, as he was going down the passage past
Anna's room, through the half-open door he saw her absorbed in grim
prayer, with all expression frozen from her face.
However, a slight, very slight, feeling of confidence cropped up between
them. He tried to make her talk about her past: only with great
difficulty could he induce her to tell him a few commonplace details.
Thanks to Braun's easy, indiscreet good nature, he was able to gain a
glimpse into her intimate life.
She was a native of the town. Her maiden name was Anna Maria Senfl. Her
father, Martin Senfl, was a member of an old commercial house, very old
and enormously rich, in whom pride of caste and religious strictness
were ingrained. Being of an adventurous temper, like many of his
fellow-countrymen, he had spent several years abroad in the East and in
South America: he had even made bold exploring expeditions in Central
Asia, whither he had gone to advance the commercial interests of his
house, for love of science, and for his own pleasure. By dint of rolling
through the world, he had not only gathered no moss, but had also rid
himself of that which covered him, the moss of his old prejudices. When,
therefore, he returned to his own country, being of a warm temper and an
obstinate mind, he married, in face of the indignant protests of his
family, the daughter of a farmer of the surrounding country, a lady of
doubtful reputation who had originally been his mistress. Marriage had
been the only available means of keeping the beautiful girl to himself,
and he could not do without her. After having exercised its veto in
vain, his family absolutely closed its doors to its erring member who
had set aside its sacrosanct authority. The town--all those, that is,
who mattered, who, as usual, were absolutely united in any matter that
touched the moral dignity of the community--sided bodily against the
rash couple. The explorer learned to his cost that it is no less
dangerous to traverse the prejudice of the people in a country inhabited by
the sectaries of Christ, than in a country inhabited by those of the
Grand Lania. He had not been strong enough to live without public
opinion. He had more than jeopardized his patrimony: he could find no
employment: everything was closed to him. He wore himself out in futile
wrath against the affronts of the implacable town. His health,
undermined by excess and fever, could not bear up against it. He died of
a flux of blood five months after his marriage. Four months later, his
wife, a good creature, but weak and feather-brained, who had never lived
through a day since her marriage without weeping, died in childbirth,
casting the infant Anna upon the shores which she was leaving.
Martin's mother was alive. Even when they were dying she had not
forgiven her son or the woman whom she had refused to acknowledge as her
daughter-in-law. But when the woman died--and Divine vengeance was
appeased--she took the child and looked after her. She was a woman of
the narrowest piety: she was rich and mean, and kept a draper's shop in
a gloomy street in the old town. She treated her son's daughter less as
a grandchild than as an orphan taken in out of charity, and therefore
occupying more or less the position of a servant by way of payment.
However, she gave her a careful education; but she never departed from
her attitude of suspicious strictness towards her; it seemed as though
she considered the child guilty of her parents' sin, and therefore set
herself to chasten and chastise the sin in her. She never allowed her
any amusement: she punished everything that was natural in her gestures,
words, thoughts, as a crime. She killed all joy in her young life. From
a very early age Anna was accustomed to being bored in church and
disguising the fact: she was hemmed in by the terrors of hell: every
Sunday the child's heavy-lidded eyes used to see them at the door of the
old _Münster_, in the shape of the immodest and distorted statues
with a fire burning between their legs, while round their loins crawled
toads and snakes. She became accustomed to suppressing her instincts and
lying to herself. As soon as she was old enough to help her grandmother,
she was kept busy from morning to night in the dark gloomy shop. She
assimilated the habits of those around her, the spirit of order, grim
economy, futile privations, the bored indifference, the contemptuous,
ungracious conception of life, which is the natural consequence of
religious beliefs in those who are not naturally religious. She was
so wholly given up to her piety as to seem rather absurd even to the old
woman: she indulged in far too many fasts and macerations: at one period
she even went so far as to wear corsets embellished with pins, which
stuck into her flesh with every movement. She was seen to go pale, but
no one knew what was the matter. At last, when she fainted, a doctor was
called in. She refused to allow him to examine her--(she would have died
rather than undress in the presence of a man)--but she confessed: and
the doctor was so angry about it that she promised not to do it again.
To make quite sure her grandmother thereafter took to inspecting her
clothes. In such self-torture Anna did not, as might have been supposed,
find any mystic pleasure: she had little imagination, she would never
have understood the poetry of saints like Francis of Assisi or Teresa.
Her piety was sad and materialistic. When she tormented herself, it was
not in any hope of advantage to be gained in the next world, but came
only from a cruel boredom which rebounded against herself, so that she
only found in it an almost angry pleasure in hurting herself. Singularly
enough, her hard, cold spirit was, like her grandmother's, open to the
influence of music, though she never knew how profound that influence
was. She was impervious to all the other arts: probably she had never
looked at a picture in her life: she seemed to have no sense of plastic
beauty, for she was lacking in taste, owing to her proud and wilful
indifference; the idea of a beautiful body only awoke in her the idea of
nakedness, that is to say, like the peasant of whom Tolstoy speaks, a
feeling of repugnance, which was all the stronger in Anna inasmuch as
she was dimly aware, in her relations with other people whom she liked,
of the vague sting of desire far more than of the calm impression of
esthetic judgment. She had no more idea of her own beauty than of her
suppressed instincts: or rather, she refused to have any idea of it: and
with her habitual self-deception she succeeded in deluding herself.
Braun met her at a marriage feast at which she was present, quite
unusually for her: for she was hardly ever invited because of the evil
reputation which clung to her from her improper origin. She was
twenty-two. He marked her out; not that she made any attempt to attract
attention. She sat next him at dinner: she was very stiff and badly
dressed, and she hardly ever opened her mouth. But Braun never stopped
talking to her, in a monologue, all through the meal, and he went away
in raptures. With his usual penetration, he had been struck by his
neighbor's air of original simplicity: he had admired her common sense
and her coolness: also he appreciated her healthiness and the solid
domestic qualities which she seemed to him to possess. He called on her
grandmother, called again, proposed, and was accepted. She was given no
dowry: Madame Senfl had left all the wealth of her family to the town to
encourage trade abroad.
At no point in her life had the young wife had any love for her husband;
the idea of such a thing never seemed to her to play any part in the
life of an honest woman, but rather to be properly set aside as guilty.
But she knew the worth of Braun's kindness: she was grateful to him,
though she never showed it, for having married her in spite of her
doubtful origin. Besides, she had a very strong feeling of honor between
husband and wife. For the first seven years of their married life
nothing had occurred to disturb their union. They lived side by side, as
it were, did not understand each other, and never worried about it: in
the eyes of the world they were a model couple. They went out very
little. Braun had a fairly practice, but he had never succeeded in
making his friends accept his wife. No one liked her: and the stigma of
her birth was not yet quite obliterated. Anna, for her part, never put
herself out in order to gain admission to society. She was resentful on
account of the scorn which had cast a cloud on her childhood. Besides,
she was never at her ease in society, and she was not sorry to be left
out of it. She paid and received a few inevitable calls, such as her
husband's interests made necessary. Her callers were inquisitive and
scandalous women of the middle-class. Anna had not the slightest
interest in their gossip, and she never took the trouble to conceal her
indifference. That is what such people never forgive. So her callers
grew fewer and more far between, and Anna was left alone. That was what
she wanted: nothing could then come and break in upon the dreams over
which she brooded, and the obscure thrill and humming of life that was
ever in her body. Meanwhile for some weeks Anna looked very unwell. Her
face grew thin and pale. She avoided both Christophe and Braun. She
spent her days in her room, lost in thought, and she never replied when
she was spoken to. Usually Braun did not take much notice of her
feminine caprices. He would explain them to Christophe at length. Like
all men fated to be deceived by women he flattered himself that he knew
them through and through. He did know something about them, as a matter
of fact, but a little knowledge is quite useless. He knew that women
often have fits of persistent moodiness and blindly sullen antagonism:
and it was his opinion that it was necessary at such times to leave them
alone, and to make no attempt to understand or, above all, to find out
what they were doing in the dangerous unconscious world in which their
minds were steeped. Nevertheless he did begin to grow anxious about
Anna. He thought that her pining must be the result of her mode of life,
always shut up, never going outside the town, hardly ever out of the
house. He wanted her to go for walks: but he could hardly ever go with
her: the whole day on Sunday was taken up with her pious duties, and on
the other days of the week he had consultations all day long. As for
Christophe, he avoided going out with her. Once or twice they had gone
for a short walk together, as far as the gates of the town: they were
bored to death. Their conversation came to a standstill. Nature seemed
not to exist for Anna: she never saw anything: the country was to her
only grass and stones: her insensibility was chilling. Christophe tried
once to make her admire a beautiful view. She looked, smiled coldly, and
said, with an effort towards being pleasant:
"Oh! yes, it is very mystic...."
She said it just as she might have said:
"The sun is very hot."
Christophe was so irritated that he dug his nails into the palms of his
hands. After that he never asked her anything: and when she was going
out he always made some excuse and stayed in his room.
In reality it was not true that Anna was insensible to Nature. She did
not like what are conventionally called beautiful landscapes: she could
see no difference between them and other landscapes. But she loved the
country whatever it might be like--just earth and air. Only she had no
more idea of it than of her other strong feelings: and those who lived
with her had even less idea of it.
Braun so far insisted as to induce his wife to make a day's excursion
into the outskirts of the town. She was so bored with him that she
consented for the sake of peace. It was arranged that they should go on
the Sunday. At the last moment, the doctor, who had been looking forward
to it with childlike glee, was detained by an urgent case of illness.
Christophe went with Anna.
It was a fine winter day with no snow: a pure cold air, a clear sky, a
flaming sun, and an icy wind. They went out on a little local railway
which took them to one of the lines of blue hills which formed a distant
halo round the town. Their compartment was full: they were separated.
They did not speak to each other. Anna was in a gloomy mood: the day
before she had declared, to Braun's surprise, that she would not go to
church on Sunday. For the first time in her life she missed a service.
Was it revolt?... Who could tell what struggles were taking place in
her? She stared blankly at the seat in front of her, she was pale: she
was eating her heart out.
They got out of the train. The coldness and antagonism between them did
not disappear during the first part of their walk. They stepped out side
by side: she walked with a firm stride and looked at nothing: her hands
were free: she swung her arms: her heels rang out on the frozen
earth.--Gradually her face quickened into life. The swiftness of their
pace brought the color to her pale cheeks. Her lips parted to drink in
the keen air. At the turn of a zigzag path she began to climb straight
up the hillside like a goat; she scrambled along the edge of a quarry,
where she was in great danger of failing, clinging to the shrubs.
Christophe followed her. She climbed faster and faster, slipping,
stopping herself by clutching at the grass with her hands. Christophe
shouted to her to stop. She made no reply, but went on climbing on all
fours. They passed through the mists which hung above the valley like a
silvery gauze rent here and there by the bushes: and they stood in the
warm sunlight of the uplands. When she reached the summit she stopped:
her face was aglow: her mouth was open, and she was breathing heavily.
Ironically she looked down at Christophe scaling the slope, took off her
cloak, flung it at him, then without giving him time to take his breath,
she darted on. Christophe ran after her. They warmed to the game: the
air intoxicated them. She plunged down a steep slope: the stones gave
way under her feet: she did not falter, she slithered, jumped, sped down
like an arrow. Every now and then she would dart a glance behind her to
see how much she had gained on Christophe. He was close upon her. She
plunged into a wood. The dead leaves crackled under their footsteps: the
branches which she thrust aside whipped back into his face. She stumbled
over the roots of a tree. He caught her. She struggled, lunging out with
hands and feet, struck him hard, trying to knock him off: she screamed
and laughed. Her bosom heaved against him: for a moment their cheeks
touched: he tasted the sweat that lay on Anna's brow: he breathed the
scent of her moist hair. She pushed away from him and looked at him,
unmoved, with defiant eyes. He was amazed at her strength, which all
went for nothing in her ordinary life.
They went to the nearest village, joyfully trampling the dry stubble
crisping beneath their feet. In front of them whirled the crows who were
ransacking the fields. The sun was burning, the wind was biting. He held
Anna's arm. She had on a rather thin dress: through the stuff he could
feel the moisture and the tingling warmth of her body. He wanted her to
put on her cloak once more: she refused, and in bravado undid the hooks
at her neck. They lunched at an inn, the sign of which bore the figure
of a "wild man" (_Zum wilden Mann_). A little pine-tree grew in
front of the door. The dining-room was decorated with German quatrains,
and two chromolithographs, one of which was sentimental: _In the
Spring (Im Frühling)_, and the other patriotic: _The Battle of
Saint Jacques_, and a crucifix with a skull at the foot of the cross.
Anna had a voracious appetite, such as Christophe had never known her to
have. They drank freely of the ordinary white wine. After their meal
they set out once more across the fields, in a blithe spirit of
companionship. In neither was there any equivocal thought. They were
thinking only of the pleasure of their walk, the singing in their blood,
and the whipping, nipping air. Anna's tongue was loosed. She was no
longer on her guard: she said just whatever came into her mind.